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My Captain is a horrendous pack rat.  He’s almost as bad as my mother.  I, however, have a low threshold for being surrounded by unusable stuff.  So while I laid around elevating my post-surgery knee yesterday, My Captain took the opportunity to clean out a bunch of accumulated junk…..  All of it his, and very little of it worth keeping:

The ’80’s flowered ties….gone.

Programs from events decades ago….gone.

Batteries that expired in 2005…gone.   But not until after we licked ’em to make sure they were indeed dead.

There were a few nuggets worth keeping, and reasons we were glad we didn’t just throw out the whole Kit and Kaboodle:

Pictures of My Captain and his daughter during Father/Daughter dances for many years in a row.  Pictures where his now textbook aloof teenage daughter was once clinging to his lap in white tights and velvet dresses.  The kinds of pictures that are so beautiful, they squeeze your heart.

And a banged up, old, brass trumpet.

It turns out that My Captain used to have quite “The Chops” when he was younger.  I’ve never heard him play….didn’t even know he had a trumpet in amongst all his copious amounts of stashed stuff.

That is one of the things I love about him….he has so many nooks and crannies to his personality.  There are still sides to him I don’t know; there are still parts of him I haven’t met yet.  This is not a simple man.  He’s not one who is easy to figure out.

And he still surprises me.

He was wondering what he should do with the ol’ trumpet.  I suggested he give it to his son, who used to play it.  But he said, “Nah, he doesn’t want it.”  Then I suggested he donate it to the school, and he said, “Nah, it’s not a good trumpet.  They wouldn’t want it.”  Then I suggested we sell it to an antique store.  He liked that idea.

But this morning it hit me that I want to hang it on our living room wall.  Why?  Because it is a reminder that My Captain is full of surprises.

And depth.

And lots and lots of old junk.

My friend Vicki, who is all in all one of the coolest chicks I know, is in Australia for a few weeks.

Let me describe Vicki to you first:  Fire Captain, Paramedic, Mother, Babe, Fashionista…you get the picture?  She’s amazing.

Ok, now add to that Adventure traveller.

Hate her yet?  It’s tough not to.

Well, Vicki had to get ready for her trip, and that was no easy feat.  Two boys, a husband, packing, planning, international details to be taken care of…hectic doesn’t begin to describe it.

But it seems in the midst of all of that, she had time to think of little ol’ me and my stinkin’ knee surgery.  Today, the day after my surgery, My Captain snuck out to run “an errand” and came back with this:

That’s right.  She sent me an edible bouquet, and had arranged several days before her trip that My Captain would go pick it up for her.

Those brown things?  Yeah, those are chocolate covered luscious red, sweet and juicy strawberries.  Dear sweet mama!

And the note…very sweet:

Now, not only do I have to be jealous of the fact that she is so accomplished, but now I have to add to that fact the knowledge that she is also more thoughtful and sweet and generous than I will ever be.

I’m really starting to hate her.

(But not as much as I love her.)

I have to say, this is the first fruit bouquet I’ve ever had, and I love, love, LOVE it.  It is so gosh darn fresh!  The company’s name is:

Edible Arrangements.

So fresh!  So juicy!  So yummy, that it’s almost worth getting cut for!

Thank you, Dear Vicki!

love,

me

Yesterday’s surgery went off like clockwork.  My knee, it seems, did not have a torn ACL, just like Dr. Raffo surmised.  But, niether was the main issue arthritis, though there was some of that in there.

In fact, none of us were ready for what we found to be the major cause of pain.

At first, it appeared on the arthroscope as a piece of disconnected cartilage.  Cartilage  that had been swimming around my knee, causing immense pain and swelling:

That big white chunky thing? Yep, that is what we THOUGHT was the piece of disconnected cartilage.

But when Dr. Raffo adjusted the zoom and aperture for the arthroscope, he found something entirely different.  Something so crazy, we were all surprised and dismayed:

That’s right….it wasn’t a piece of cartilage.  It was a Parasitic Twin! If you look carefully, you can see it actually looks just like me!  Crazy!  Complete with Sunglasses!

Of course, we were all aghast…and the Doc removed it post-haste.

Obviously, my knee feels much better, though it has a bit of healing to do yet.

All I can say is that hopefully someday our diagnostic tools will be able to catch these things earlier on.  It seemed like such a shame to remove the happy little bugger.  But out it had to come.  And thank God for medical science!!!

Thank you so much Doctor Raffo and staff!

In preparation for tomorrow’s knee surgery, I’m making cookies.

HUH?

Yep.  Cookies.  You see, I’ve been in enough surgeries to know that the experiences surrounding the actual medical procedure, Pre and Post Op, are really key to a good outcome. And I’m not taking any chances.

In other words, I’m going to bribe my nurses with home-baked cookies.

I’m not above this kind of thing.  Cookies are the universal language.  The ultimate peace-offering.  Good-Will insurance.

I’ve had mean nurses before.  Thankfully, not often.  Fortunately the number of good nurses far outweigh the number of mean ones.   But reality dictates that there always will be a chance that I may be assigned a disgruntled caregiver.  An unhappy camper.  A Nurse Ratchet.  And if I do, I’ll be prepared.

The advantage to having a broken down body that has required multiple surgeries, is that I’ve had an opportunity to find the Achilles heels of ‘Nurse Ratchets.’  I have unlocked the mystery to win them over:  Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I’ll be writing a treatise on it in the near future, but my research is not yet complete.

It also works on policemen, firefighters, overworked teachers, and my children.  It does not, however, work on the employees at the Drivers License Bureau.

They are too far gone.